It’s cold on the floor this morning. Like me, this big, empty room takes time to warm up.
Yet this is my favourite time of day; before the rest of the company arrives, when there’s only one or two others, spread as far from each other as we can, seeking space, solitude, and the sacred.
During these 30 minutes before class, it’s a quiet examination of my body, emotions, and state of mind; getting to know it today, seeking to understand all I carry into the space, and how it’s expressing through me, in me.
It probably doesn’t look as though I’m doing much. Lolling around on the floor; small stretches, tugging to find tight muscles, tension, working out how to ease them off, yet also better connect each part and feel it whole.
I stand and take hold of the barre like a safety crutch. Other dancers have filled the space; some chat animatedly, drawing energy and inspiration from each other, bonding and connecting. Others, like me, remain in their own worlds, hard to draw out.
I didn’t notice at first, but the teacher has entered. The room fills with quiet music as her wrists gently roll, her hands and fingers wiggling and gesturing as she mentally takes herself through exercises and enchainment’s. In any other context she’d look insane. She’s been a teacher a long time and so simultaneously knows to take the temperature of the room, considering where we are in the season and the year, and ponders how she might adapt class: making it harder, easier, her tone, and delivery, all to better help us prepare for the day ahead.
Gently easing my body into movement I riff to her music, exploring physicality and emotion. How does this movement feel today, with all that I’ve carried here, connecting to this music, this space, with this energy? What dancer am I today; now?
The conversation of whether dance is a sport, and whether dancers should be compared to athletes, seems to raise its head every couple of years.
On one side are those wanting to impress upon us the need to properly respect the body and stresses placed upon it by dance in some contexts, particularly the stresses on young, growing bodies. They make the argument, as part of a promotion of safer dance practice and injury risk reduction, that dancers would be better to identify as though they’re “artistic athletes”.
And there are those that believe if dance were more widely perceived as a sport, then dance would benefit from greater mainstream respect and popularity, equating to enhanced mainstream value, and as a consequence be more profitable to engage with.
As a counter, come those arguing, as Dereck Dene, Artistic Director of Hong Kong Ballet recently did on a widely shared Facebook post, that dance is an:
Art form about the poetry of movement making beautiful shapes, coming to life within music.
I’m not going to weight the merits of both sides of this argument. For me, dance is not a sport, and here’s my why…
Let’s dance! One step back, two steps forward.
I’m going to first step back and clarify why definitions are important, because does it really matter if some wish to call dance a sport, yet others object to that definition?
All “knowledge” and the shared labels attributed to knowledge – which is different from personal, subjective experience – come via a process of comparison and contrast. We look at a thing and compare it to another to understand what makes it similar and different. For example, why do we call one set of features and attributes a table and not a chair? Both have four legs, a place for resting something – a plate, or a butt – and are a certain height depending on who it’s for. Yet a chair typically differs first in its intended purpose – it’s for sitting on - and that it has a back on it. Yet not always, and that slightly different chair-like shape we might label a stool.
There are 160,000 known varieties of flies in the world, and 20,000 known varieties of bees. At some point, the difference between what gets classified as a bee and a fly becomes incredibly specific, as comparing and contrasting to separate varieties requires ever finer detail.
This is the process by which we segment and compartmentalise in order to define and label life, so we can communicate with one another to better understand life’s processes and develop objects that are of greater specificity. This particular chair for this specific activity or function e.g., camping chair, dining chair, pool chair etc.
Yet merely because particular things share common characteristics does not mean they should be lumped together. A chair is not a table, though they are both furniture. Doing so strangles our ability to communicate intelligently about different objects or activities and ultimately devalues the intent of language.
And so, while dance and sport are both physical based activities, sharing some obvious similarities, they also differ in important ways.
If someone is free dancing, we don’t think of that as sport. Yet if children are playing soccer in the backyard, we still understand that as playing sport.
Sport has specific parameters and guidelines, overseen by a referee to ensure an equal playing field for the combatants. And ultimately, while sport has many elements of collaboration e.g., the players on a side must collaborate, and both sides must collaborate to agree on the terms of the engagement, yet fundamentally what defines sport is its purpose, which is competition. Two or more sides engage in a physical game with the explicit purpose of defeating the other within the parameters of the game. Usually this is within the context of entertainment and play, yet it can also be for political and/or purely financial purposes.
For all the many wonderful personal and collective stories sports yields, for all the incredible skill sports people master to achieve higher and higher levels, for all the fitness and strength required in some forms, and for all the passion people feel for sports, ultimately dance is not a sport.
The fundamental purpose of dance, or any of the arts, is not competition yet is consciously considered, imaginative and creative self-expression. Of course, dance can be made to be competitive. Anything can. The fundamental purpose of cooking is to feed and nourish us for survival, yet cooking competitions abound. And alternatively, almost any skill-based activity can in some contexts, be understood as art. That is, consciously considered self-expression. I’ve italicised “consciously considered” because art is not merely self-expression, as everything we do is self-expression. Art is consciously considered self-expression via imaginative and creative exploration.
Interestingly, when people talk about dance being a sport or dancers as “artistic athletes” it’s almost exclusively in the context of elite ballet or contemporary dance artists. That is, of all the many dance styles and vast choreographic expressions, it’s usually only a couple of genres that get this label. A quick scroll via Instagram or Tik Tok demonstrates why this is odd, as there are SO MANY fascinating, emotionally engaging, surprising, quirky, bizarre, transformative, artistic etc. dance works and dancers that exist in the world that we’d never define as either “sport” or “athletic”. Yes, they’re often highly skilled yet so is playing the piano, or carpentry, or juggling, yet I don’t hear anyone wanting to label those activities as a sport or as athletes. What usually defines them is their uniqueness, their power to surprise, to move us and make us question. It’s their ability to play with expectations outside the lines, to bend and break conventions and “rules”. Further, many dance pieces and dancers do not require a specific kind of strength or fitness beyond what most healthy humans enjoy – and sometimes less - and yet that does not necessarily diminish their successful ability to creatively and imaginatively be artistic. Because dance is not a sport.
Perhaps an easier way to see the absurdity of dance being labelled as a sport is to try and replicate it in reverse. That is, is a 100 metres runner, even an elite one, somehow a dancer or an artist? They’re strong, fit, and can be considered beautiful to look at. There’s a high level of technique required. Their movement might even be considered graceful and elegant, and they require rhythm. So … why don’t we talk about them as dancers or artists? What about pole fault? What about NRL players, or AFL players? Some talked about Donald Bradman’s batting as art, explaining that it was beautiful. Again, what this misses is intent i.e., consciously considered self-expression. The Don didn’t bat or swing to be beautiful or creative, but to score runs. To win. The subjective label of “beautiful” or “creative” was a by-product of the observer.
And why do we try so hard to have dancers perceived as sports people or athletes anyway? I suspect it’s because we’re desperately hoping for a short-cut that will help non-dancers better understand why those of us in the industry are so passionate about dance. We want them to get us, and perhaps more importantly, value us in terms or status and/or financially.
And though we should reach out using metaphors and seeking bridges that are likely to help people better understand our passion for dance, the way to do so isn’t by morphing the arts into being a sport. For while sports are great, I love them for what they are, and understand the passion people feel for them, as they entertain, help bond and to define personal and collective identity, sports do not nourish us in the same way. They’re different. They have different intents and purposes.
Dance is a craft and an art. It’s a personal, and sometimes collective journey of creative exploration for the purpose of consciously considered self-expression that is ultimately subjective. There is no clear winner crossing the finish line, or at the final whistle, no black and white. Dance and the arts are subjective opinions – though sometimes widely collectively shared - personal preferences, and the arguments which emanate from them are richly textured with colour, tone, and hue.
With this said, being honest with myself I no longer experience differences between things so clearly as the shared compartmentalising labels of language we create to help our existence imply. Just as there’s a point at which it becomes harder to define between a variety of bee and fly, so too can the difference between any activity and art become trickier. What if a sportsperson stopped playing for the intent of winning and simply played the game for the joy of personal, creative self-exploration? Does that then make it art? What about Break Dancing? Its intent is competition, yet it’s full of creativity and conscious self-expression. Life rarely fits neatly once we start generalising.
Caveat aside, my wish is that we choose to take the time to better articulate what makes dance – and the arts – unique and powerful to individuals and society, rather than relying on short-cuts, which typically diminish the value of dance. 
Josef Brown is the Managing Director at The Library Aesthetic dance media, and Relations & Development Director at MDM Dancewear.
This article featured in the July/August/September issue of Dance Australia